Asrael / Serenata

This is the only available official recording of Karel Ancerl conducting Josef Suks Asrael. Asrael is central to Josef Suks oeuvre and an outstanding work in the Czech music repertoire. The prominent standing of the conductor Karel Ancerl is due mainly to his success in establishing the Czech Philharmonic as one of the worlds most eminent and successful orchestras in only a few years time. Under his great predecessor Vaclav Talich, the most significant Czech conductor of the twentieth century, the orchestra was able to flourish primarily in its home country, yet under Ancerl it became, despite the restrictions of the Cold War, an orchestra that was celebrated everywhere, whose 1959 world tour went down in history as the longest and most extensive ever up to that time. A stirring intepretation of the Sudwestfunk-Orchestra of Baden-Baden, digitally remastered from the SWR original tapes!